This is the allusionist in which I, Helen Salzman, pour so much serratura in language,

I can't tell whether language is still under there. Coming up in today's show, big, heavy

books weighing down my shelves and my conscience.

Okay, let's get right to it.

The term classic turned up in English around the start of the 17th century when it meant

of the highest class, same meaning as the Latin Classicus from which it came. It swiftly

became the label for ancient Greek and Latin literature, and by the mid-19th century, that

sense had been extended to any works with that sort of quality. Though, when it comes

to the classics of English literature, I'm kind of vague about what that quality is.

Written by dead white men, going by the selection of classic literature that I read at school

and university, big books that make me feel guilty and stupid for not having read them,

or source material for TV dramatisations involving bonnets. Seriously, what does classic mean now?

That's a kind of difficult question really because you've got traditional classics, books

that have always been, well certainly for as long as I've been a bookseller, been classed

as classics like Thomas Hardy or Dickens.

This is Jonathan Main, the proprietor of Bookseller Crow, my local independent bookshop, because

I live in the 1930s, no, in the suburb of London called Crystal Palace, where McDonald's

and Pizza Hut shut down, but independent businesses hang on, disproportionately proud of

this.

And then you've got modern classics, something like John

Updike, and then you've got contemporary classics as opposed to Life of Pi, say.

How do these things get to be classic in both Dickens and Life of Pi? What is it about?

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